Leora Batnitzky
Biographic Data
| ID | 488127 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leora Batnitzky |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leora |
| FAMILY NAME | Batnitzky |
| SIGNATURE | BATNITZKY L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7461-9066 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Absence of Redemption
This article argues that Leo Strauss gives voice to a twentieth-century Jewish theology of the absence of redemption. Using the term “political theology” to characterize Strauss’s thought is unexpected. But this is only surprising because the reception of Strauss remains ensnared with that of Carl Schmitt. The first and last task of this article is to disentangle Strauss from Schmitt. In between the opening and closing frames of separating Straus…
Rethinking Christian and Jewish Exceptionalisms☆
This article argues that Christianity and Judaism, as they have developed historically, express complementary but opposing exceptionalist perspectives. The article defines “exceptionalism” in terms of the singular mission that Jews and Christians each claim for themselves and the varied Jewish and Christian conceptions of how their missions relate to non‐Jews and non‐Christians respectively. While Jewish exceptionalism consists in the demand to b…
Between Ancestry and Belief
This article argues that thinking about disputed conceptions of religious conversion helps us understand the emergence of both Jewish and Indian nationalism in the nineteenth century. In today’s world, Hindu nationalism and Zionism are most often understood to be in conflict with various forms of Islamism, yet the ideological formations of both developed in the context of Christian colonialism and, from the perspectives of Jewish and Indian refor…
A Tale of Two Leo(n)s
At first glance, it is not surprising that the thoughts of Leon Roth and Leo Strauss have not been brought into conversation with one after. After all, as far as I have been able to tell, Roth (1896–1963) and Strauss (1899–1973) did not know each other and do not refer to each other. More substantively, Roth and Strauss would seem to have little in common with one another. One of Strauss’ main worries was whether modern liberalism could sustain i…
Spinoza, Hermann Cohen and the Legacies of German Idealism
Michael Wolter, Der Brief an die Römer, vol. 1: Röm 1-8, EKK 6/1 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag; Ostfildern: Patmos, 2014), xiii +559 pp., ISBN 978-3-7887-2883-0.
Jewish Legal Theories
Institutionalizing Rights and Religion
Modern statesmen and political theorists have long struggled to design institutions that will simultaneously respect individual freedom of religion, nurture religion's capacity to be a force for civic good and human rights, and tame religion's illiberal tendencies. Moving past the usual focus on personal free expression of religion, this illuminating book - written by renowned scholars of law and religion from the United States, England, and Isra…
Institutionalizing Rights and Religion
Hans Kelsen and Hermann Cohen
Scholars have not been reluctant to strike analogies between Hegel and Kelsen, however much the two may appear to be so antithetical. It should be specifically emphasized that already, with these authors, the dispute that would forcefully break out in 1920s, was beginning to smoulder. Hence, it was neo-Kantianism that would situate form prior to the content of experience, and would attempt to grasp the logico-formal premises rendering scientific …
The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy
The second volume of The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy provides a comprehensive overview of Jewish philosophy from the seventeenth century to the present day. Written by a distinguished group of experts in the field, its essays examine how Jewish thinking was modified in its encounter with modern Europe and America and challenge longstanding assumptions about the nature and purpose of modern Jewish philosophy. The volume also treats mode…
The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy
How Judaism Became a Religion
A new approach to understanding Jewish thought since the eighteenth century Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality—or a mixture of all of these? In How Judaism Became a Religion , Leora Batnitzky boldly argues that this question more than any other has driven modern Jewish thought since the eighteenth century. This wide-ranging and lucid introduction tells the story of how Judaism came to be defined as a religion in the modern period—and…
Idolatry and Representation
From Resurrection to Immortality
Hans Jonas began his 1961 Ingersoll Lecture by acknowledging the “undeniable fact” “that the modern temper is uncongenial to the idea of immortality.” 1 Jonas nonetheless concluded his lecture by affirming that “although the hereafter is not ours ... we can have immortality ... when in our brief span we serve our threatened mortal affairs and help the suffering immortal God.” 2 While he may not have realized it, Jonas's words capture what I shall…
Idolatry and Representation
Although Franz Rosenzweig is arguably the most important Jewish philosopher of the twentieth century, his thought remains little understood. Here, Leora Batnitzky argues that Rosenzweig's redirection of German-Jewish ethical monotheism anticipates and challenges contemporary trends in religious studies, ethics, philosophy, anthropology, theology, and biblical studies. This text, which captures the hermeneutical movement of Rosenzweig's corpus, is…
Pragmaticism and Biblical Hermeneutics
This article considers the tension between Peter Ochs' commitment not to apply external standards to scripture and his view that rules of meaning must continually be adjusted to new conditions. In this context, the article rejects Ochs' claim that “the ‘isms’ of modernity [have] exhausted their positive contribution to the betterment of humanity,” arguing instead, on the basis of Ochs' work itself, that we remain “children of the epoch of great d…
Franz Rosenzweig on Translation and Exile
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy
Modern Jewish philosophy emerged in the seventeenth century, with the impact of the new science and modern philosophy on thinkers who were reflecting upon the nature of Judaism and Jewish life. This collection of essays examines the work of several of the most important of these figures, from the seventeenth to the late-twentieth centuries, and addresses themes central to the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy: language and revelation, autonom…
Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas
Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas, two twentieth-century Jewish philosophers and two extremely provocative thinkers whose reputations have grown considerably, are rarely studied together. This is due to the disparate interests of many of their intellectual heirs. Strauss has influenced political theorists and policy makers on the right while Levinas has been championed in the humanities by different cadres associated with postmodernist thought. In…
Mordecai Kaplan as Hermeneut
In an insightful article on Mordecai M. Kaplan and process theology, Jacob Staub, past academic dean of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, rightfully notes that any attempt to extract a single, consistent, 'authentic' essence from all of the various theological formulations byJewish teachers through the ages is a perilous task indeed.' As students ofJewish thought and intellectual history know, not only are there a wide variety ofJewish th…
Introduction
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
Renewing the Jewish Past
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
The Image of Judaism
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
Hermann Cohen and Leo Strauss
Encountering the Modern Subject in Levinas
The scholarly literature on Levinas and Descartes is surprisingly sparse, given Levinas's bold claims in Totality and Infinity that he is drawing on a number of profound Cartesian insights. Some attention has been given to Levinas's use of Descartes's conception of infinity and some to his use of Descartes's evil genius in arguing for a goodness beyond being. My focus in this essay, however, is on Levinas's appropriation of Descartes's philosophy…
Dialogue as Judgment, Not Mutual Affirmation
A Tale of Two Leo(n)s
At first glance, it is not surprising that the thoughts of Leon Roth and Leo Strauss have not been brought into conversation with one after. After all, as far as I have been able to tell, Roth (1896–1963) and Strauss (1899–1973) did not know each other and do not refer to each other. More substantively, Roth and Strauss would seem to have little in common with one another. One of Strauss’ main worries was whether modern liberalism could sustain i…
Encountering the Modern Subject in Levinas
The scholarly literature on Levinas and Descartes is surprisingly sparse, given Levinas's bold claims in Totality and Infinity that he is drawing on a number of profound Cartesian insights. Some attention has been given to Levinas's use of Descartes's conception of infinity and some to his use of Descartes's evil genius in arguing for a goodness beyond being. My focus in this essay, however, is on Levinas's appropriation of Descartes's philosophy…
Rosenzweig's Aesthetic Theory and Jewish Unheimlichkeit
The aesthetic theory in Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption remains a conundrum to Rosenzweig's interpreters, both in terms of its relation to the Jewish philosophical tradition and in terms of its German cultural and philosophical context.1 Can the Star's emphasis on aesthetics be reconciled with the Jewish philosophical tradition's, and most particularly with the German-Jewish, aversion to image-making? Does the Star even have a unified aesth…
Translation as Transcendence
With the publication of an English translation of Martin Buber's and Franz Rosenzweig's essays on biblical translation and method, the Englishspeaking world finally has a glimpse into the workshop of the BuberRosenzweig translation of the Hebrew Bible into German. There is something undeniably odd, however, about a translation of essays on translation, in which the particular points of the texts translated refer only to the details and technicali…
Dialogue as Judgment, Not Mutual Affirmation
Rosenzweig's Aesthetic Theory and Jewish Unheimlichkeit
The aesthetic theory in Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption remains a conundrum to Rosenzweig's interpreters, both in terms of its relation to the Jewish philosophical tradition and in terms of its German cultural and philosophical context.1 Can the Star's emphasis on aesthetics be reconciled with the Jewish philosophical tradition's, and most particularly with the German-Jewish, aversion to image-making? Does the Star even have a unified aesth…
The Philosophical Import of Carnal Israel
Introduction
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
Renewing the Jewish Past
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
The Image of Judaism
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
Hermann Cohen and Leo Strauss
Encountering the Modern Subject in Levinas
The scholarly literature on Levinas and Descartes is surprisingly sparse, given Levinas's bold claims in Totality and Infinity that he is drawing on a number of profound Cartesian insights. Some attention has been given to Levinas's use of Descartes's conception of infinity and some to his use of Descartes's evil genius in arguing for a goodness beyond being. My focus in this essay, however, is on Levinas's appropriation of Descartes's philosophy…
Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas
Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas, two twentieth-century Jewish philosophers and two extremely provocative thinkers whose reputations have grown considerably, are rarely studied together. This is due to the disparate interests of many of their intellectual heirs. Strauss has influenced political theorists and policy makers on the right while Levinas has been championed in the humanities by different cadres associated with postmodernist thought. In…
Mordecai Kaplan as Hermeneut
In an insightful article on Mordecai M. Kaplan and process theology, Jacob Staub, past academic dean of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, rightfully notes that any attempt to extract a single, consistent, 'authentic' essence from all of the various theological formulations byJewish teachers through the ages is a perilous task indeed.' As students ofJewish thought and intellectual history know, not only are there a wide variety ofJewish th…
Franz Rosenzweig on Translation and Exile
»Vielmehr bietet [der Kommentar] auf höchstem Niveau eine substantielle Auseinandersetzung mit den Hintergründen, den Zusammenhängen, der Theorie und der Praxis des Grundgesetzes. Besseres lässt sich von einem Verfassungskommentar nicht sagen.“ Herbert Günther Staaatsanzeiger für das Land Hessen 2018 (50), 1494–1495
The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy
Modern Jewish philosophy emerged in the seventeenth century, with the impact of the new science and modern philosophy on thinkers who were reflecting upon the nature of Judaism and Jewish life. This collection of essays examines the work of several of the most important of these figures, from the seventeenth to the late-twentieth centuries, and addresses themes central to the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy: language and revelation, autonom…
Pragmaticism and Biblical Hermeneutics
This article considers the tension between Peter Ochs' commitment not to apply external standards to scripture and his view that rules of meaning must continually be adjusted to new conditions. In this context, the article rejects Ochs' claim that “the ‘isms’ of modernity [have] exhausted their positive contribution to the betterment of humanity,” arguing instead, on the basis of Ochs' work itself, that we remain “children of the epoch of great d…
Idolatry and Representation
From Resurrection to Immortality
Hans Jonas began his 1961 Ingersoll Lecture by acknowledging the “undeniable fact” “that the modern temper is uncongenial to the idea of immortality.” 1 Jonas nonetheless concluded his lecture by affirming that “although the hereafter is not ours ... we can have immortality ... when in our brief span we serve our threatened mortal affairs and help the suffering immortal God.” 2 While he may not have realized it, Jonas's words capture what I shall…
Idolatry and Representation
Although Franz Rosenzweig is arguably the most important Jewish philosopher of the twentieth century, his thought remains little understood. Here, Leora Batnitzky argues that Rosenzweig's redirection of German-Jewish ethical monotheism anticipates and challenges contemporary trends in religious studies, ethics, philosophy, anthropology, theology, and biblical studies. This text, which captures the hermeneutical movement of Rosenzweig's corpus, is…
How Judaism Became a Religion
A new approach to understanding Jewish thought since the eighteenth century Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality—or a mixture of all of these? In How Judaism Became a Religion , Leora Batnitzky boldly argues that this question more than any other has driven modern Jewish thought since the eighteenth century. This wide-ranging and lucid introduction tells the story of how Judaism came to be defined as a religion in the modern period—and…
The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy
The second volume of The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy provides a comprehensive overview of Jewish philosophy from the seventeenth century to the present day. Written by a distinguished group of experts in the field, its essays examine how Jewish thinking was modified in its encounter with modern Europe and America and challenge longstanding assumptions about the nature and purpose of modern Jewish philosophy. The volume also treats mode…
The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy
Hans Kelsen and Hermann Cohen
Scholars have not been reluctant to strike analogies between Hegel and Kelsen, however much the two may appear to be so antithetical. It should be specifically emphasized that already, with these authors, the dispute that would forcefully break out in 1920s, was beginning to smoulder. Hence, it was neo-Kantianism that would situate form prior to the content of experience, and would attempt to grasp the logico-formal premises rendering scientific …
Institutionalizing Rights and Religion
Modern statesmen and political theorists have long struggled to design institutions that will simultaneously respect individual freedom of religion, nurture religion's capacity to be a force for civic good and human rights, and tame religion's illiberal tendencies. Moving past the usual focus on personal free expression of religion, this illuminating book - written by renowned scholars of law and religion from the United States, England, and Isra…
Institutionalizing Rights and Religion
Spinoza, Hermann Cohen and the Legacies of German Idealism
Michael Wolter, Der Brief an die Römer, vol. 1: Röm 1-8, EKK 6/1 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag; Ostfildern: Patmos, 2014), xiii +559 pp., ISBN 978-3-7887-2883-0.
Jewish Legal Theories
Philosophy (23 works) · Theology (19 works) · Judaism (17 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (14 works) · Political science (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Religious studies (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism (9 works)